Dissense is a live performance for a solo performer and up to 100 audience members. The work explores the idea of transferring sensations from one body to another.

Equipped at the start of the performance with a range of body-based sensors (heartrate, respiration, skin conductance, EEG, electrical signals from the muscles), the performer moves through a range of intense tasks, transferring their physiological response into the crowd via light, sound and worn haptic devices.

The emotional response to these changes is captured by the sensors and converted in stimulation to the audience that can be either simultaneous or spread across the group like a wave. Over the course of the performance, a minimalistic composition of light and sound unfolds with unpredictable moods, from very subtle and liminal to saturated flashes and noises. The performer and audience thus becomes the test subject of a mass experiment in visual and aural stimulation aimed at provoking subtle or bold sensations captured by the sensors and diffused across bodies – a new form of sensation at a distance.

With wearable sensors and ever sophisticated algorithms, we can increasingly quantify, that is, put numbers to almost any kind of human behaviour that we engage in: sleeping, calorie intake, weight, number of steps walked, heart rate and many others.

These numbers are then converted back into graphs, statistics and other discrete representations that hint to a quantified “image” of our self, tending to homologate our individuality instead of promoting its unicity.

SOS is a course aimed at exploring techniques and methods for creative use of real time physiological data, acquired via affordable sensing technologies, and translated to a personal “sensory selfie”, a portrait of one’s self that others can experience in other ways than a picture, a graph or a textual description.

Data tracked through ECG,temperature, respiration, motion and other sensors will be either transferred into other bodily sensations via haptic and thermal transducers, or used to modify the soundscape and the light/color atmosphere of the environment.

Other / Self is a performative installation that explores the tension between a vision of ourselves as "quantified" and "qualified", arose from the physical and sensory presence of the other. The installation consists of an immersive sound, light and sensory experience, directly modulated by one of our most intimate and felt bodily experience: our heartbeat.

Two of visitors entering a brightly lit, enclosed space at the same time, where they are connected to a set of sensors. When they sit next to each other but going in the opposite direction, they are suddenly plunged into total darkness. Very gradually every individual begins to feel the heart rate of the other, transmitted by and transformed into luminous, acoustic and haptic patterns at different intensity levels.

When synchronized, the breathing and heartbeat of visitors begin to change their sensory and physical encounter. The rapid, abrupt change of light, sound and vibration leads to an eerie climax, in which the boundary between ourselves, others and the environment disappears.

What if we could feel on our bodies the presence of others at a distance? Haptic Field is a participatory multi-sensory installation merging contemporary fashion, wearable technology and an exploration of the senses beyond site. Employing especially designed garments, Haptic Field creates a singular and uncanny physical experience, giving us the impression that our senses stretch beyond the body’s boundaries.
With one’s ability to visually navigate and make sense of the world removed upon entering the installation, the entire space is transformed into a continually shifting, hallucinatory environment where one begins to experience other senses like touch, sound, proprioception, the experience of time and the invisible presence of others — senses that we normally ignore or forget about in our mainly visually dominated world.
The environment might be shimmering in a barely perceivable shades of primary colors like a fluctuating sea of ethereal particles or suddenly plunged into pitch-black darkness, slowing down one’s ability to move while sonic rhythms and textures seem to continually change the size and shape of the room. Thus light, sound and touch become distributed among bodies – dynamically shifting back and forth, like an immense haptic field – a distributed field of touch.

There’s a vibrant world of invisible and inaudible life that falls out of the envelope of our ordinary perception. It is inside and outside our bodies as well as in the food we eat, the water we drink and even in the air we breath.

Our daily life is accompanied by a myriad of microscopic organisms who silently swarm, float and dance in their own quest for surviving, reproducing and evolving.

There also exist magnificent structures at invisible scales that form the geometrical architectures of crystals and lattices, the building blocks of what we call matter. These forms too undergo processes of evolution and transformations.

Using DIY (Do It Yourself) and DIWO (Do It With Others) strategies, this hands-on course aims at giving the students the ability to build affordable tools for microscopy and to learn ways to creatively treat the visual material in order to provide a multi-sensory and aesthetically appealing experience.

ILINX is a performative environment for the general public provoking an intense bodily experience that blurs the senses of sight, sound and touch. In the environment, a group of four visitors at a time wear specially designed garments. These wearables are outfitted with various sensing and actuating devices that enable visitors to interface with the performance space. During the event, a ritualistic progression which lasts approximately twenty minutes, the natural continuum between sound and vibration, vision and feeling becomes increasingly blurred, extending and stretching the body’ boundaries beyond the realm of everyday experience.

The project is inspired by work in the area of what is called sensory substitution – the replacement of one sensory input (vision, hearing, touch, taste or smell) by another, while preserving some of the key functions of the original sense.
The term ilinx (Greek for whirlpool) comes from the French sociologist Roger Caillois and describes play that creates a temporary but profound disruption of perception as is common in experiences of vertigo, dizziness, or disorienting changes of speed, direction or the body’s sense in space. “…An attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind“.

PLASM is an immersive, generative, audiovisual installation that evokes an endless voyage through a continually transforming biological landscape. Inspired and informed by the work of computer science pioneer Alan Turing in mathematical biology and thechemical basis of spontaneous pattern formation in the natural world. Large scale moving images immerse the visitor into an ever evolving environment of organic forms resembling living cells, tissues, organs and other lifelike formations. Through its continual generative system, PLASM exemplifies Norbert Wiener's famous adage that "We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. Not stuff that abides but patterns that perpetuate themselves."
                                                     generously supported by:

Experimental evidence has validated the existence of scalar, non-hertzian waves able to defy traditional notions of electrodynamics, propagating in a vortex fashion through orthogonal space-time dimensions to ours, and reaching faster-than-light speeds. These waves carry and modulate quantum energy information.

A new holistic paradigm, based on the unfolding of these principles and technologies, holds tremendous implications for human evolution.

Inspired by his own investigations on longitudinal waves and energy propagation, TeZ has conceived an immersive audiovisual performance, a voyage into superluminal fields.

DIsplace is a performative environment and laboratory where your sensory experience is put in the foreground. Informed by the anthropology of the senses, the project has been developed by a team of artists/researchers in computer based arts and design, anthropology, gastronomy and sensory history.
In Displace, groups of visitors progress through a series of environments. They experience sensory-based actions that intermingle olfactory, gustatory, visual, sonic, haptic and proprioceptive stimuli. At first, these sensory modalities are separated from each other but then they grow over time to convoke intense, almost hallucinatory sensations where all sensory phenomena merge to the point of saturation.
Displace is one of series of experiments conducted within the context of a larger research project entitled “Mediations of Sensation” developed by Chris Salter, TeZ and anthropologist David Howes.
  more about DISPLACE / M.O.S.  

ANHARMONIUM is an immersive installation and performance, investigating the spatial awareness of subtle fluctuations that emerge from vibrational phenomena. The interference patterns within a sonically activated fluid illuminated by laser emissions forge an augmented meditative space, a psycho-physical observatory. In nature, modal phenomena occur as interactions between diverse oscillating systems, producing mutual perturbations and deviations from pseudo-linear behaviors imposed by gravitational and electromagnetic parameters. The interferential and resonant modes produced by intermingling forces reveal the immense morphological range of matter set into motion. Only a small bandwidth of this range falls within the sensorial envelope of ordinary perception...   download dossier  

Composed and recorded by honor harger and tez at optofonica lab 2009.
Based on very low frequency radio signals of the earth's ionosphere perturbated by solar wind, recorded at the ventspils international radio astronomy centre in latvia 2003.
Photography by evelina domnitch & dmitry gelfand.
Cover by marc beekhuis.
Format: 5.1 surround dvd-r, pal
Limited edition: 60
Executive produced by leerraum.
Release date: february 21, 2010

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creative investigations on stroboscopic light, binaural beats and interference patterns

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PV868 is an experimental creation and performance aimed at producing an audiovisual feed/stimulus which would allow a peculiar effect of moving visual patterns to emerge directly in the brain of the viewer. This stimulus is generated in real-time by a combination of flickering video, in the form of abstract lights and color gradients, coupled with synchronized synthetic sounds (binaural beats) diffused in a surround quadraphonic system. These elements are always recombined in different ways by means of ad-hoc created software, controlled by TeZ with a “touch” wi-fi remote device.
  download dossier      download infoFlyer 

pv868 was also released as limited edition dvd by leerraum
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The Optofonica Capsule is a futuristic design/architectural object, featuring a mechanized structure whose parts form an autonomous immersive audiovisual environment. The shell-like shape of the capsule envelopes the body of the visitor to optimize the experience of Surround and Tactile Sound. Low frequencies are fed through a specially constructed floor, directly into the bone system of the human body, thereby converting the sound into hyper-perceivable vibration. The five panels of the Capsule's helmet are designed with specific (carbon-fiber + acoustic foam) material and transducers so to vibrate and reproduce the surround sound field without any use of traditional speakers. A flat screen is positioned to cover most of the visual field of the spectator to engage sight at a short distance and panoramic vision...   download dossier  

CF# is a series of procedural video compositions inspired by the 20th century abstract art movement "Colorfield". The software generates an ever-changing videopainting by compositing two layers of algorithmic color gradients and photo maps which react in real time to a dual-channel sound composition. One sound channel is translated as an horizontal scanning line; the amplitude of the sound determines the alpha transparency of the colored line, appearing like a glass transparent surface. The second sound channel's amplitude determines the horizontal composition, visualizing the sound wave onto a different photo map at every turn. CF# 1_2n was released as part of the COLORFIELD VARIATION exhibition and DVD release, curated by Richard Chartier.   LINE  

Generative Live Cinema (GLC#) is a concept and software conceived for non-linear live-cinema performances. It is based on the interaction and interference between sound, algorithmic animation and video. Animated vectorial layers react to sound and generate variable movements in dialogue with "concrete" video footage. The combinations between the elements are controlled by the performers but unfold unpredictably, hence creating dynamic variations at each moment. The musician(s) and the video artist both influence and operate the system, as such establishing an exchange that transcends the usual improvisation practices.

Inspired by the philosophical elements underlying japanese traditional martial arts, Ai is the first of a trilogy (Ai-Ki-Do) of procedural video compositions. The photo and video material, taken by TeZ during a two weeks residency in Tokyo in 2004, is constantly recombined and mixed with newly created imagery and algorithmic vector animations. A process of masking also takes place, as such creating an interplay of dynamic shapes through which the video fragments are revealed. The installation unfolds over two screens, one more dynamic and cinematic, the other more static and meditative, reminiscent of a painting. The piece is complemented by an ever-changing soundtrack resulting as a layered mix of several ad-hoc created short compositions. This work investigates the possibility of rethinking video and cinema as a more organic blend of elements for non-linear storytelling and sensual ambience.

Protoquadro is an artistic technique conceived to use digital displays to produce objects that stand in a space as paintings used to do. These artworks have some characters of a traditional painting and some of a totally new class of objects, therefore the name, formed by the greek term "protos" (first) and the italian "quadro" (painting).
Ideated by Maurizio Martinucci and Federico Bonelli, Proquadro is a model for automated compositions starting from original and thematic photographic source material which is re-composed by means of specific algorithms into an animated and ever-changing painting. The Protoquadro generative compositions slowly unfold in the digital canvas and evolve in an organic fashion. They rely on distinct methods and techniques which render an intricate and fine-textured composition to reflect both the intuition and sensibility of the artist and the procedural models based on the simulation of natural laws and chaotic behaviors.
Current developments of Protoquadro are lead in collaboration with PHILIPS ExperienceLab, and artists Amy Jackson and Robert Fischer.